The paper is dedicated to the method of analysis of literary ontologies developed by Valery Podoroga within analytical anthropology. We attempt to formalize particular aspects of the method with an emphasis on the use of ocular metaphors as abstract representational schemata in the analysis of the writings of N. Gogol, F. Dostoevsky, A. Bely, A. Platonov, Yu. Druskin, S. Eisenstein, and Dz. Vertov. Particular attention is paid to the notion of the moment in Podoroga’s approach. It is viewed not only as a physical or metaphysical category, but also as a distinct discursive device related to the “defamiliarisation” technique proposed by Russian formalist V. Shklovsky as a vehicle of novelty and strangeness emerging in literary texts of innovative writers. We demonstrate how different temporal and ocular metaphors in Podoroga’s texts, such as “moment-time”, “suddenly-time”, “eye-bullet”, “eye-egg”, “eye-crystal”, “eye athleticism”, and “mechanical eye” fuel operational interaction between the optical and temporal discourse lines whilst describing transgressive experience and, concurrently, creating the conditions for its reproduction in the reader’s perception. On the whole, the research strategy of V. A. Podoroga may be construed as an optical construction where the initial ocular metaphor defines the nature and the structure of the entire studied literary ontology, representing the author’s view not only and less as a special way of literary interpretation of the real world, but more as an departure point in constructing an autonomous aesthetic space existing in its categorial logic and governed by its own spatiotemporal laws. Applying formal approach to the works of V.A. Podoroga has allowed us to identify its mainly constructivist nature and to uncover the methodological basis of his research strategy.